these women were from all over the country. one was from santa fe, new mexico, two little kids at home, so this is the first time i have been able to breathe and not have my kids all over me. she is starting a baby rental equipment company she wants to make into the air b&b of baby equipment so when traveling with kids, all the things, toys to carry, you go from one state to another and rent the equipment. and focus on my company, these other entrepreneurs workshoping and training and learning so you could go out and pitch investors for capital for a business. so i met carrie and other entrepreneurs and the other

interesting thing was it was building a network with women entrepreneurs, the loneliness, you hear about so and collaborative. it is not, working together introducing to investors, advisors, mentors, build her confidence, she got home and her husband looked at her and said who are you? where's the old carrie? this is the new carrie, she is so confident. fran meyer, cofounder of match.com, one of the advisors at the women start up lab. she says i want to partner with, take your vision and scale it and make it into a billion-dollar company so fran meyer is her cofounder and ceo and carrie is the techy one and they spread the company to 40 different markets across the country and it is booming. back to the collaboration,

sisterhood of finding people who will help you not just scale your business and find investment but build the confidence that you can do it, you're not alone. you have a network of supporters. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. .. reporting on an evolutionary experiment, the the domestication of foxes. this is book tv on c-span2. come o

>> thanks for coming to the southern festival of books which is my favorite book festival in the entire world but don't have when i was at three days ago. i am a nonfiction writer. i know what it takes to makes writing serious information into compelling human stories look easy. lee does it incredibly well. in the presentation i did yesterday i said one of the very best things about the profession of being a writer is that it introduces me to so many people who are very passionate about the work they do and they became experts out of enthusiasm and thinking what they do is the most fascinating thing in the whole world this is a prime example of that the suspect lee and i met about two hours ago that we've known each other through our books and we've

communicated electronically for many years. before i knew that lee is a distinguished university scholar and professor of biology, i knew him as the author of mr. jefferson in the giant moose which is a vivid and detailed book about natural history early in the time a country. he has written and co-authored many books, occludin including acclaimed textbooks on animal behavior and the principal revolution. he exemplifies, and i'm not the only person who says this,

all tourism and operation himself. he has legendary generosity as a colleague in the field and i've experienced it myself for today is when you talk about his new book called how to tame a fox and build the dog. i will give you any background because he will tell you the whole story. in the new york times book review they said it's part science, part russian fairytale and part spy thriller. i know riders would ransom their grandmother for the kind of reviews this book has been getting. one of the great intellectual and emotional expenses of my own life was the realization many years ago of what i got from the scanner book. it's the realization that is with me all the time is a nonfiction writer and thinking about it greatly improves rush-hour traffic and becomes part of my way of seeing the world. when you walk out of here, you

will think differently about how nature works. the realization i get from this kind of book is that nature's creative medium is the individual living generation which means it's never been more creative in the drastic era more than it is today. it also means there's never been a member of the homo sapiens on part of the calendaring evolution then you are. four years ago. [inaudible] that's another thing we have in common. we talk about this because we don't on extraordinary people. the fun thing about this book is the cross-referencing that sets off in the brain when you see the world differently. i think the second volume, the creation of the world did not

occur at the beginning of time. it occurs every day. please welcome lee. [applause] >> thank you so much. i've really been looking forward to this. i had the chance to be introduced by my favorite writer, michael fins. administered off in an unusual way which is to ask you a question, suppose you could build the perfect dog. what would be the key ingredients in your recipe? it would certainly want you, maybe floppy ears, a curly tail that wags in anticipation whenever you are around, smart loyal, intelligent, the thing is you don't need to build this because for the past six decade decades, a dedicated

team of russian geneticists in siberia have been building it for you. the perfect dog, except it's not a dog at all. it's a fox. it's a domesticated box. they built it in the 40-degree winters of siberia and they built it in the blink of an eye in terms of evolutionary time. one hundredth of the time it took our ancestors to domesticate wolves into dogs. this is a picture of my friend and colleague. she is 83 years old, and every day, including today for the past 58 years she has been leading what is known as the silver fox domestication study. the last seven years i've had

the honor of working with her to produce a popular book where we tell the science and the behind-the-scenes story. what i will tell you about today are foxes that will melt your heart and lick your ears, just like this fox did five seconds after they put them in my arms in siberia. more than that i will tell you about the science that's been done that made us rethink the process of domestication. a process that's critical to our own evolutionary history. we will try to walk through this experiment in about 40 minutes. it all starts with this fellow. in the late 1930s he was a college student in the cultural academy outside of moscow. he was studying genetics and because it wasn't agricultural college, you have all sorts of interactions with many domesticated species.

after you finish their, like almost every single russian mail at the time, he went and fought in world war ii. when he came back, he landed a job at a place called the central research laboratory in moscow. this laboratory work with all sort of for reading animal but the two key animals were foxes and minks. that firm was some of the very reliable sources of western money coming into the soviet union in the 50s and 60s. it was while he was at the research lab that he came up with the idea for the silver fox domestication idea. from his own reading and interaction with domesticated species, he knew that many domesticated species share a common set of traits.

they tend to have things like floppy ears, curly tails, modeled much like for pattern, low stress levels, they produce longer than their ancestors and he thought this was interesting. he thought why would that be because if you think about it, we've domesticated the species for all sorts of reasons. we domesticated some species for transportation like horses. we domestic others like pigs and cattle for food, and yet other species like dogs for companionship and protection and yet many domesticated species share those traits. floppy ears and curly tails of low stress hormone levels, so much so that it's been known as the domestication syndrome. why should this exist. his hypothesis went like

this. all domestication events began with our ancestors choosing the call missed, t missed animals. you can't have your domesticated species biting your heads off so they all start by choosing the call missed payments to animals. all those other trades that i mentioned, somehow or another they must be genetically connected to tame this until he decides he's going to test these ideas. he is going to run a domestication experiment in real-time using what he knows so well. the experiment, at one level is incredibly simple. what they propose to do was, every generation, choose the call missed fox and breed them.

then he could test first whether or not he was getting tamer and tamer animals over the years and whether or not the floppy years and curly tails develop. when he came up with this ideas in the early 30s and 40s and 50s, he's coming up with an experiment in genetics. at this time, it will illegal to do genetics and the soviet unio union, and that's because of this fellow on your left-hand side. he was a charlatan, a pseudo- scientist who had risen up in the ranks not just the political ranks, but the scientific ranks, and the way he did this was by arguing that western genetics with

lajoie science that was being promulgated by wreckers, it was an idea that had long been disproven. it was in fact correct and more in line with soviet philosophy. he became so important that he literally was stalin's right hand man when it came to science. he's going western geneticists wreckers and saboteurs. for thousands of geneticists in the soviet union's lost their job because of him. hundreds were thrown into prison and dozens were murdered. this was the environment in which he came up with his experiment in domestication which is an experiment in

genetics. they knew all too well how dangerous it was to do this. one of those two dozen people were wha murdered was his brother who is an up-and-coming geneticist. he would be careful with his experienc experiment because it involved a lot of people and he didn't want to put other people at risk. he decided he was, start. he doesn't have time and money to begin of full-blown experiments in the 50s. they work with a couple dozen boxes, choose the famous ones and they watch you after your to see whether or not, does it look like they are getting tamer over the generations and the answer was yes.

what had happened was he was offered a position as a vice director of a new giant institute of biology that was being built in siberia. it was part of a place that's known as the academic village. basically what happened was some leading scientists of the day cleared out a large chunk of siberian forest and built two dozen world-class institutes. everything from biology to chemistry to figure physics and he was going to be vice director of the biology institute. so now he is going to have the power and the money to start a full-blown experiment. what he won't have is the time. he will have tremendous administration duties and what he needs to do is find a young scientist who can lead the

full-blown silver fox domestic experience. before he leaves moscow to start in siberia's he visits moscow state university. he talked to some colleagues, he tells them here's what i want to do. every generation i'm in a select the common fox and do this domestication experiment. i need a young scientist to help me. one of the people that comes in. [inaudible] at this time he is 25 years old. she is just finishing her undergraduate degree. she comes in on the interviews for and they remember the interview as if it happened yesterday. she said i want you to build a dog out of a fox and he laid out the experiment. every generation we will look to see if we get tamer and tamer animals. by this time it was not quite

as powerful as it was before but he still decides to make an issue of it and he could thrown in prison. everybody knew that, but she was touched up he understood this was a dangerous endeavor. he also told her, i think i'm onto something here. it could take ten years or 20 years or your whole life before you find something interesting, but she was hooked. she wanted to be involved so she takes her husband and their 2-year-old daughter they take a train ride from moscow to siberia to begin the full-blown experiment. now, she's going to work at this institute of biology that is still not a place where they can run an experiment with the silver foxes.

she has to travel around the soviet union and visit these fox farms that exist mostly for breeding foxes further for and there are hundreds of these owned by the government. just to find the right place that she can start the domestication experiment. eventually she settled on a place about 225 miles south of where she was. an overnight train ride, four times a year she would go there, sometimes for weeks or months to start the experiment. this place is a massive fox farm. at any given time there could be 10000 foxes there. it was a cash cow for the government. when she went there and said what she wanted to do, the director looked at her like

she was crazy. why would anybody want to waste their time domesticating foxes when all this money exists in terms of fox for. they said okay fine you can work with a couple hundred foxes. she starts the experiment. the protocol is pretty basic. every morning at 6:00 a.m. she gets up and she starts. she moves from fox caged fox cage and she's forced the foxes on how tame they are. she scores him as she approaches the cage. are they tame, neutral or aggressive. he scores, she opens the door to the cage and she scores the messy places something inside the cage. she does this for hundreds of foxes each year comes up with a composite score of all of how cold they are. then she takes the top 10% of

the coldest males in the top 10% of the team as females and she breeds them. some of them were a little calmer, some of them were hyper- aggressive. even after a couple years she was seeing hints that the experiment might work. even after a couple generations of reading the fox was calm enough that she could pick it up and hold him in her arms. every generation she did this in every generation they got slightly calmer and tamer as a

function of the breeding. then she had to come up with the classification system. she had class three foxes who were aggressive and never made the cut for breeding. five generations later there are class to foxes that are tame enough to pick up but don't show any emotional response. then there are class one. their friendly and they display whinin behavior when she leaves and a tail wag when she approaches. these are the foxes making the cuts the next generation. a year later she has to come up with another category because the experiment is working so well. the class 1e, elite foxes. six generations of the experiment they are pups that sought contact not only tail

wagging but whining, whimpering and licking our hands in a dog like manner. what's more, they weren't only wagging their tails. they were wagging their curly tails. a few of the domesticated foxes have curly tails. that's one of those traits that we see in lots of domesticated species. all the sudden it pops up in the foxes. you never choosing the animal based on whether they have a curly tail but it's coming about as a function of choosing the calmest animals. the first of the trait in the domestication syndrome now pop up. a couple years later they secure the funds in the space to bring the experiment to the institute of biology. this is what the experimental fox farm looks like on a nice day in a siberian winter. there are about 50 fox and each shed are now her and her

team are restricted to just working with them four times a year, they can work with them every day. that's a plus. another big plus is he is only a couple hours away and he can come interact with the foxes. something special happens she can pick up the phone or jump in the car and bring him over to show him. one of the special things that happened very quickly was this bo data fox. he was the first of the domesticated fox to show floppy ears. in just a few of the tame foxes it existed, but over time it would grow. he looked so much like a dog. when she used to take the slide and show that talks around the soviet union, people would accuse him of

putting a picture of a dog to convince them that the fox experiment was going well. so now we not only have animals that are getting tamer and tamer and calmer and, but they are now showing curly tails that they wag and floppy ears. he said what kind of wonder is this and that's what everyone who saw her said. as time and on, every generation they were getting slightly calmer and slightly tamer and they were seeing all types of other things emerge. by the mid- 1970s, they found the pups of domesticated females open their eyes a day earlier than normal fox. they responded to sounds two days earlier. when she takes off her population geneticist hat and talks freely, she will say it's almost as if the foxes were itching to interact with

humans early. another thing that was happening was females were extending their breeding season. the domesticated foxes were breathing a little earlier than normal and a little bit later so extended the. about a week in late january or february and they kept reading a -- cap breeding a couple days later. it's now appearing in the tame foxes. strange color presents starting to emerge. these much like colors that we see in so many domesticated species, including a strange white star that often appears on the four head of the domesticated fox, if you know courses you know that sometimes this odd things happen in horse horses. and on and on and on. at this point they decide they're going to expand the experiment at every generation they been selecting the

calmest, tame as the animals. they will keep doing that but they will add another experiment align and what they're gonna do is in this line they are going to choose the least tame, least calm animal. they will choose the fox that are most aggressive toward humans, not so much because they're interested in aggression but because having this line of aggressive foxes will allow them to better understand their tame foxes. for example, in genetics, if you do breeding crosses between aggressive and tame foxes, you can understand something about the underlying genetics. more portly for us, what this line of aggressive foxes does is it allows them to address a question that is always sitting there under the surface when you're doing these kinds of experiments in genetics.

this is an experience in behavior and genetics. when you do these experiments you're always worried about something. you think the changes you are seeing are due to underlying genetic changes that occur because you are breeding certain types, but you're always worried that something else might because in the changes you are seeing. maybe pups learned by interacting with their moms and that's why some of them are more tame and others are more aggressive. maybe there's something about the cocktail that you experience in your mom's womb as you develop so that when you're born you act one way or another. there's all sorts of other nongenetic things that might be explaining what's going on and you can never know that until you run an experiment, and the classic way to do this is to run what's known as a transplant experiment. so new it does this in basically, here's the setup. that involves pairs of female foxes, one pair is attained fox and one is an aggressive fox. they're pregnant, there about

a week pregnant and there's many of these pairs. what she does as she learns through intricate surgery that's necessary and what she does is she transplants half of the developing embryos from the aggressive fox into the tame fox uterus and half of the tame fox developing embryos into the uterus of the aggressive fox. so now each of these foxes is holding their own developing biological offspring plus foster offspring. this is critical because this allows you the power to know is what you're seeing due to genetic change or is it due to something else because you can look at the pups when they're born. if the pups behave like their genetic mom even when they are raised in the uterus of the opposite kind of female, then that tells you their behavior is due to underlying genetics. you look at the behavior of

the foster pups to see two they act like their foster mom or do they act like their biological mom. of fact like their biological mom, changes you are seeing are due to genetics. so she does this and let me just show you, the first problem she had which was this. yup she can go in and transfer one week old embryos from one fox to the other, but when they give birth, how is she going to know which offsprings are which. fortunately the foxes themselves present the answer. the coke color of the mom and dad will show the coat color of the offspring. they color code themselves so they know who's who. let me just show you one example of what she found. here's her description of a crutch of pups born to an

aggressive moms. this is what she was describing what happened. everybody, they're all waiting for them to give birth and they're waiting for the pups to get old enough that they can just watch them and here's what we know happened. it was fascinating. the aggressive mother had both tame and aggressive offspring. her tame offspring were barely walking and if there is a human standing by, they were already rushing to the cage doors and wagging their tails. she, the mother was punishing her foster offspring for such improper behavior. she growled at them, grab their neck, threw them back into the corner of the nest and what do they do but get up, walk over to the front of the cage and start licking the hands of humans. this is exactly what you would expect if tame this is due to genetic changes. furthermore they described with the other pups did.

the biological, the genetic pups that were born to this aggressive mother. they retained their dignity. one of my favorite phrases, growling aggressively the same as mothers and running to their nest. they behaved like their genetic mom and the foster pups behave like their genetic mom. the changes they are seeing are due to underlying genetics. the experiment is working. it's working so well that she now decides to push it as far as it can go. she wants to know just how far among the path of domestication they have come in so she goes with this audacious idea. there is this tiny little house on the experimental farm. she says i want to move in the house and i want to live with one of the tame females 24 hours a day, the way we live with our dogs. okay.

she has the perfect fox in mind. the foxes name which means tiny ball of fuzz, and this is the only known picture of him being petted. from the moment she opened her eyes, she was the most calm social of the foxes she had ever met. she knew from then that this would be the foxes would move into the house, but she waited a year because she waited for the fox to be pregnant. now she could move in and watch her but she could also watch her pups who, from the moment they were born would be interacting with humans, the way that we interact with our dog pups. she would take notes. here's the experiment too, the outside of the experiment a house. it still stands today 45 years later. this experiment is 1974. on the inside, it might be hard to see but it's rebel now. nonetheless, when i was there

and it was minus 35 degrees outside and there were 3 feet of snow on the ground, she insisted that she give me a tour of the inside of the house, and she went from room to room saying here is where i used to pet her. here's where the pups used to play this game with me as if she was reliving it. she lived with them exactly the way you would live with your dogs, playing with them and letting them run outside in the yard without a leash. they would respond to their name. so they're living together and about three months later, in july of 1974, something extraordinary happens. it's the summer and while this is what it looks like in the winter in siberia and actually gets quite hot. you get 90 degrees. so every night she would sit out on a little bench outside the experiment a house with the book reading around 6:00 p.m. this is july 1974 and every night when she did this the

fox would lay by her side and she would read and pet the fox each night. before this night lots of people had come to visit. it had sort of become a celebrity house and whenever a vip would come around they would bring the vip to the house and let them see the fox and everything was always perfect. the domesticated fox always behaved in a hyper friendly way to humans. but on july 15 she was sitting outside reading her book and here's what happened. every night there is a watchman who comes around to make sure everything is fine on the farm, but they had just hired a new guard, a new watchman that nobody knew. this person was approaching in a brisk pace that might be interpretive as being somewhat aggressive and the fox sees this. she stands up, she bolts

toward the night watchman and begins barking exactly the way a dog barks. she had never heard the fox bark like this. her immediate thought was she is protecting me, but she had to step back and say wait a minute, it's easy to infer those things, i know better. then something else happened. as soon as she began talking to the garden a calm voice and it was clear that she was not in danger. she went back down and sat next to the bench and waited for her to pet her again. she is convinced that she was standing up to defend her. are there other conclusions, sure, but from that night on she knew she would never leave that experiment and she never has. >> let me go and try to tell

you some of the other remarkable things that have happened in the six permit. i mentioned to you before that one of the things that happen in the mid- 70s was that the domesticated fox were breeding a little earlier and continuing to breathe a little later. in the mid- 1980s, something remarkable happens. some of the domesticated females were ready to breed a second time. not only in the normal time of january but in september. they were in estrus. they were ready to breed. that year there were no domesticated males. the next year a few more domestic females were ready to meet in september and that year some of the males would meet and when she mated those pairs and those females gave birth to not one but two.

think about the restructuring of the reproductive system that's necessary for that to happen. all as a function of them being selected on whether they are tame and call. remarkable. what's more, these animals were beginning to look eerily doglike. for example, when you look at their faces, when you think of a wild fox you think of this lon long -- when you measure the faces of the domesticated fox, they have around or more doglike snout. what's more, their bodies also changed. another thing you think of a fo fox, when you think of wild fox is they have these really hostile limbs that allow them to move around easily. all of this as a result of selecting on behavior and only

behavior. as time went on and new tools became available she began working with people to understand the underlying molecular genetic changes that happened during domestication. and so, she worked with a woman and they looked at domestication at the genetic level. they asked all sorts of questions. one of them was this. if you look at the fox genome, do you find that the changes associated with domestication are localized in one area or do they kind of spread everywhere and when they asked that question, they found any of those traits associated with domestication were located on fox chromosome 12. that's interesting to know where they are. more interesting is at the same time, people who work on dog domestication were asking the exact same question in dogs and so now they could

compare the underlying molecular genetics of dog domestication and fox domestication, and what they found was amazing. there are different numbers of chromosomes and boxes and dogs, but you can, easily map out the fox chromosome 12 is found on parts of three different dog chromosome scene right here. one of these is where most of the underlying genetic change that occurred in dog domestication is found so even at that deepest level, it looks like they are mimicking what happened in dog domestication. i might finish up with one last treat. before i show you the trait, here's why it's my favorite. the straight to not appear until the experiment had been going on for 45 years. today, if you worked on the same exponential system for 20 years you would be giving a lifetime achievement award. if you had done that you

wouldn't even come close to finding what we're going to see here. it's hard to imagine anything more perfect in a domesticated pet than what we will see here. one of her colleagues was studying the sounds that these foxes made. what they found was this. the tame foxes, and only the tame foxes made two kinds of vocalizations. one of them sounds like this. can you hear that at all? that sound, if you map it onto a spectrogram is the closest sound to human laughter that any nonhuman species makes. it is hard to imagine a more perfect thing to have in your domesticated species than this. they don't know the details. they don't know how this emerged. they don't know why it emerged, but the fact that it

did is almost too remarkable. if you ask her today, 58 years later about her aspirations, her hopes and dreams for the experiment, and believe me, i asked her, which will tell you is a number of things. first of all she wants is registered as official house pets. right now there are a few dozen that live in houses but they're considered exotic. there's a board that allows you to certify something of a house pet. she wants him to be certified as a house pet. she wants more of them to be living with people in their houses. the other thing she will tell you is one day i will be gone and i want my foxes in the experiment to live forever. i know i do and i hope you do as well. >> if you have a question, please come up to the microphone and i'll be happy

to answer for you. while we do this, i will put a few domesticated foxes playing in the snow up there for you to enjoy. any question. >> do they shed a lot. >> yes. there are two problems associated with them becoming true houseguests. they shed a lot and they really stink. this is the problem, but the third problem is they get so excited about interacting with humans that they be all over you, all the time. aside from those little things, they are trainable, they will fetch, they will do everything your dog will do. >> you have a question of whether. >> the question is was she involved as a collection that was occurring at the time?

>> in the sense that basically they tried to convince everyone when the soviet union is starving to death because of various policies like collectivization, he is saying his brand of genetics that has long been disproven would allow them to produce crops at a level that would feed everyone else. they made up data so it would appear that was the case. >> how do they explain away the experiment? >> basically what they did is they told the authorities that they were working on fox physiology and fox for her. that was something they were all keeping track of.

they kind of knew what was going on but so much money was coming into the soviet union that they kind of turned the other way. they flew under the radar. there was a number of instances we talk about in the book with ailments got shut down. it didn't happen but it was razor thin, it was only because of the daughter who convinced him not to pay attention to what he was saying, this is when he was beginning to wane in power so he didn't close the experiment down, but almost did. >> at one point you were talking about how he was

approached by a strange caretaker or something' something's. i can understand what happened. >> every night a guard will come around to make sure everything was okay on the farm. that night the guard was a new one. nobody had seen him before and so when they were approaching, she was doing so in a fairly brisk way that might be associated, might've been interpreted as aggressive, and that's when the fox bolted toward the guard and began barking the way a dog will bark when they were protecting the master. >> david. >> thank you for a wonderful presentation. my question is about the genetics. now that we have new genetic technologies and we know where , roughly on the commas on these genes are located, could you comment on whether or not we can imagine taking american foxes or others in using this insight to short-circuit some of those decades and produce some animals that were

domesticated. >> it's a good question. only touched on some of the genetics they are doing. most of the changes they see are not replacement of one gene by another but rather differences in how active they are. gene expression patterns, that's where most of the action is. i'm not sure if you take that information to create an experiment we got domestication faster. i suppose in principle, it's possible if you could use other technologies to insert or delete particular sections, you might be able to speed up the process but i don't know they've ever thought about that but i could ask and get back to you.

>> today have other long-term interest is. >> many but if you go to the other side of the experiment of fox farm where i was showing you the pictures, there are hundreds of minks. for the past 40 years, they have been running the equivalent of the domestication experiment using minks. selecting the call missed in one line and the most aggressive in the other and they find results that are remarkably parallel. when you select for calm, tame minks you get them but you also get changes in color and facial structure that parallel what happened in the foxes. they've actually also done the same domestication experiment in rats, selecting for tame rats, aggressive rats, again

you get the behavioral differences but you get all those other differences as well. in the book we talk about working ideas on why that's so. one thing i haven't told you is okay, they select for behavior and lo and behold they get these other things with domestication, but why? what's going on that allows that. we don't have time to get into the details but their understanding how all these things are connected. other questions? thank you so much for allowing me to tell you the story. [applause] >> how long were you over there. >> i was basically over there for a couple weeks each time in russia. her team is phenomenal.

i wish i could get her to come over here but she has some medical issues that allow her to fly. >> you can buy the book, yes, great question. [inaudible] >> straight out toward the capital you pass a big ten. [inaudible] >> we are talking cortisol, not only cortisol but that's one of the very easily interpreted findings because basically, at the hormonal level when you're selecting for tame animals, you're

essentially selecting low cortisol levels, but it's not only that. they've also found the other side of the coin in addition to having low stress hormones they have high levels of all sorts of chemicals that are associated with happiness so serotonin, dopamine, all those things, they have higher levels than typical foxes do. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you been listening to

evolutionary biologist. we will be back with more from the southern festival of books in a few minutes. next up is radio talkshow host and founder of red state, eric erickson. >> for tv tapes hundreds of author programs rough country all year long. here's a look at some of the events we cover this week. monday we are at the new york historical site he to hear the founder and ceo success academy charter school. eva discusses her experiences with the u.s. education system. later that night we will be out word bookstore in new jersey where diana will describe the events leading up to the worst day in wall street history. october 19, 1987. back to manhattan for the

personal and political life of president herbert hoover at the roosevelt house. also in boston, katie will share her experiences covering the trump campaign. on thursday will be at the jewish museum on the life of golda meier, israel's fourth prime minister. on sunday we are at the west coast in san francisco for the 2017 american book award. that's a look at some of the events book tv will be covering this week. many of the events are open to the public. look for them to air in the near future on the tv, c-span2. >> good morning. how are you today. >> as soon as i heard gig, i said i know who this is spread this is the famous. [inaudible] it's so good to hear your voice. >> thank you for your work and the discussion you're having

around this whole german nazi issue. as you and i both know, every german during that time period, if you wanted to buy bread you had to have a nazi card so it wasn't really a matter of choice. the thing that i really would love for you to talk about is the notion of, you touched upon it briefly, binary choices, and where i live here in northern california the bay area, there is a growing population of people who call themselves progressives, and it seems to me that term has been hijacked to the point where, it's really at the exclusion of god. its progression toward the notion that yes we are making our culture better, we are progressing but it's to include everything except god as the focal point and centrality issue. i'd love to hear you talk a little bit about how

progressives are collecting and hijacking what it means to be alive and working in god's kingdom. >> before we hear from him, tell us about yourself. >> as eric well knows, my grandfather was also in the german military. he was one of those in the german resistance. another relative an uncle is also in the german conspiracy against hitler, and another uncle was the german ambassador to russia and is the architect of the nonaggression pact. all three were found guilty of treason when the famous bomb plot failed and they were all executed.

these things are very near and dear to my heart. i just think eric for exposing a lot of these things that there are really some brave germans. the sad truth is that i think eric mentioned germany has been paying this notion of guilt, this debt of guilt for so long and you're right. you can never get past that. >> i was gonna say, if guild didn't take himself, his family are heroes. his family, they gave their lives to defeat not see is him from the inside. many gave their lives are were tortured horribly to stand against hitler. that brings us to the larger

question i think people of good faith in america. i think people understand that when they take to the streets in violence and when the democratic party on the angry bitter left, you will have problems. something has happened. it does seem to me that the anger, the gloves off incivility tells you something. even if you didn't agree with martin luther king junior, the nonviolence would give you pause to say there's something there. these people look so humble and so noble and so dignified. when you have people behaving like animals, even if you agree with them, you are disinclined from supporting them because you don't approve

of what they're doing. i think there's a lot of young people who are angry and looking for an excuse to break something and they know i can smash a columbus statue and nobody will prosecute me. it is troubling to me. i do blame the news media coverage. i've been really, incredibly grieved by the new york times in the last year or so. they printed an article in effect excusing the violence as defensive or people who are willing to fight if necessary. that is rank nonsense. they ought to be condemning this. this is not going to lead to a better america were to a safer america. i think we have to be fair you better condemn everybody who is an idiot and his willing to

divide the country along these lines. it's really, were in a bad spot, and of good people on the left don't stand up and if good journalists don't emerge to do their job, we are in big trouble. we depend on journalists to do their job. it's not your job to take down this president, it's your job to tell the truth, and if you can't tell the difference, you should get on the journalism business. we are really in need of honest journalism today. i'm really concerned about the state of the union because of that. >> you can watch this and other programs online booktv.org. here's a look at some of the current best-selling nonfiction books. topping the list is pastor john with his thoughts on making the christian community more inclusive in a bigger table. followed by we were eight years in power, an examination of race, the obama presidency and the election of donald

trump. after that, in braving the wilderness, social scientists asks what it means to belong. fourth is hillary clinton with her thoughts on the 2016 presidential election. followed by the landscape that inspired the little house story in the story of laura ingle wilder. we continue with astrophysics for people in a hurry. followed by petty, recount of the late rock musician tom petty. after that in strong inside, andrew recalls the collegiate years of harry wallace, first after american basketball player in the fec. the co-owner of produces books with her memoir, this is a story of a happy marriage.

wrapping up our look at bestsellers, according to parnassus books in nashville is katie and her experience covering the trump campaign in unbelievable. some of these authors have or will be appearing on book tv and you can watch them on our website book to be.org.

you are watching the tv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] . my name is nathan but 3 and i will be your host for an hour here. i want to welcome everybody who is watching on booktv to the southern festival of books sponsored by humanities

tennessee. i want to say thank you to all those who donate, your individual donations make this event possible. thank you very much. if you would like to make a donation see me afterwards and i can introduce you to the right people who would love to talk to you. a little bit of housekeeping. i will going to introduce our offer erick erickson and erick erickson will speak a little bit and read through his book and we will open the floor to questions. if you do have a question, we are live on booktv so we want the audience at home to hear. erick erickson is the popular host of atlanta's evening news, 95.5 fm and a.m. 750, former editor of red states. his website, the resurgent, he

is a fox news contributor who at the atlantic called the most powerful conservative in america today. he studied political science and history of university and earned a law degree at walter f george school. he lives in georgia with his family. in late 2016 he and his wife were diagnosed with grave medical conditions. in the midst of his wife's battle with cancer he was rushed to the hospital, potentially fatal influx of blood clots and leaving permanent scarring. facing this dual health scare and contemplating his mortality he published an unusual piece to his website which gets more than 2.8 million viewers a month. erick erickson fsa written in the form of a letter to his children was like anything he had ever published before. it was not about washing intrigue or the days news which he wrote about values and enduring lessons he would want his children to live by even if he were no longer with. the piece went viral with

overwhelming response that stretched beyond erick erickson a fan breaks. his as it was contrasted with the values of donald trump writing erick erickson and his wife are both living lives of love, faith, devotion and service. both have ultimate confidence in the goodness of creation and their grace filled place in it. you may share that faith or not but erick erickson is living and attached life emotionally, spiritually, morally and communally. welcome erick erickson. [applause] >> if i am going to read i probably need a copy. i forgot to bring one. thank you all for having me. thanks to those of you watching live. my name is erick erickson. i am from a rural part of louisiana. when i was 5 years old my dad's

company gave him a choice, moved to dubai or find a new job. when i was little we moved to the middle east and lived there for ten years. the cool part about growing up there is every three months we had to leave the country to get a visa and my dad's committee would tell us to go somewhere. i have been to more countries than states. i have been to montana to perform a wedding. so far no divorces and i have seen montana but never seen wyoming or idaho, never been into the rocky mountains before or the west coast. the experience traveling abroad, my kids never have that experience. in the middle east in the 1980s

during the iran iraq war multiple times having people try to blow our school up having bomb threats called in for various organizations and sandwiches open to look for explosives as we walk to school in the morning. we lived in an open neighborhood and to move home where overseas we had a lot of camel racing and politics became a connection to me. and i became a political junkie, and survived the david duke race where my parents had to vote for the crook and it is important. going to college in georgia i met my wife and made a home with the law school practice for five years and one day one of the partners of my law firm asked do you know what deficit of a dumbass is?

i said no. he said you. so i did. friend of mine started the website red state and put me in charge of it and things exploded. in 2009 cnn called and asked if i wanted a job, i had a friend who had to put up with me for three years at cnn and after the 2012 election moved over to fox where i have been since and my life has revolved around politics day in and day out. my wife is not political at all. we were in college together and i got to drive in jack kemp's motorcade while he and bob dole were running and called my wife and a friend and told her what was happening and she said that is great but who is jack kemp? he is running for vice president. she was silent for a minute and said you have to campaign to be vice president of the university? not a political creature at all. we don't discuss politics at home.

i have in the past several years become more committed to my favorite. started going to seminary largely because i talk about faith and culture on my radio program in atlanta and started getting a lot of smaller churches. they would say pastor is going to be gone could you fill in? i would say no because i had never been to seminary. getting so many requests i figured it was time to go to seminary. they found out i was going to reform seminary and none of them have called since. but i stayed going to seminary. i love it. i take a class a semester. when i first went the president of the seminary took me to lunch and said you have to make me a promise before you go to seminary. i said okay, what? makes a promise and i will tell you what you are promising. so i made the promise. he said don't go to seminary.

i said how is this going to work? i already paid tuition. he said you can take classes but if you go to seminary you will start sounding like that on the radio. come take classes but don't get in the mindset of being a seminarian or you will sell like on the radio and the ratings will take. i go to class, i take classes, theological classes and working through the books -- eventually i will have a degree but i have enjoyed it. in the process i realized more and more -- realized my politics and my faith were budding heads and i needed to do a better job reconciling my politics to my faith instead of my faith to politics and this past year i saw many friends choose the opposite way of trying to conform their faith to politics instead of the other way around. lost a number of friends along the way. we had people show up on our front porch to threaten us because i wrote a piece as a committed christian and conservative i just can't support donald trump for president. i was an elected president and

wasn't going to vote for him. we had people show up at our doorstep, armed guards at our house for three months lose my kids were yelled at the grocery store by a man who wanted them to know their father was destroying their lives and destroying the country and they needed to do something. they would come home from school in tears because kids would ask that i'd been shot or was i going to be shot? their parents hated me and they needed to know it. it was hard on the family. when this went on i was having a harder time breathing, decided to get back in shape. i couldn't keep up and hit 40, i am getting old and i thought it was allergies and then i didn't know what it was. finally in mid april 2016 with the stress of all this deciding it was just stress making it harder to breathe i was out of breath, laying my head on the pillow and it left me out of breath rolling over, waking up, gasping and maybe go to the

doctor. she had my laptop, took away my microphone and made me go to the doctor. next thing i knew i was being wheeled into a hospital, as they were pushing me into the machine to scan my lungs, my wife got a call on her cell phone and the waiting room from doctors in the mayo clinic who thought she needed to have her lungs checked. as i got out of the ct scan the technicians are not supposed to tell you anything. this young man comes in and doesn't want to make eye contact with me, should i strap him down? i just laughed, he literally put his hand on my chest, please don't move, you should be dead and they start stripping me down, and rush me into an icu and they have my skin up on the board and putting me in a room and the

doctor on call, i can tell he's looking at the scan, have you taken bodies to the morgue yet? my blood oxygen level was below 90% and i had more blood clots in my lungs and they could count. i had yet to see a doctor since then who has looked at me and they all look at me and say you are supposed to be dead. i had blood clots in my lungs right now. their old ones, not new. my wife flies out to arizona, i'm not allowed to travel on a plane and they diagnosed her with lung cancer. she takes a tiny pill every day and as long as the pill works she is fine. we go for scans every 3 months and our life is normal every three months, next on halloween and as long as the medicine works she is fine. eventually the medicine will

stop working and we hope they will create another medicine. the news came out the last couple weeks, every 24 months it is an amazing, this cancer that every 24 months mutates on cycle, the same mutation and they have to keep up with the development of the medicines. protesters at the house, my life revolves around politics, we don't talk about it in the house and we find other things to talk about. and if something had really happened, what i wanted them to know about god, what i wanted them to know about me, the bad things i've done and the good things. at my kid at school there's a running joke, an example of googleing you never know what will come up. some very true and one not and i wanted to write to my kids about the bad things i have done it good things and the regrets that i have of the bad things i have done and why they should listen to me because i

have done those things and learned my lesson and favorite recipes and if i die before that, how would they make the cinnamon roll. and make the gumbos. not that they eat that, full confession make it there into chicken the guts other than cinnamon rolls, and what lessons what i want them to know? how would i want them to know about the way i was raised, i start writing these down and appease on my website took on a life of its own after david brooks mentioned it in contrast to the president's values at the time of the access hollywood tape coming out, contrasted what he thought was the president's values with mine and the way the president surrounded him with people the

way i have, and it was the easiest book i have ever written, i have written three, one of them is probably worth getting the first is not. this one was the most personable and some of the lessons particularly as a practicing christian, and going to be hostile, how to navigate a world that seems upside down from their perspective. how do they reconcile being in the world with of the world? i want them to know they need to do what is right even when it is not liked. i want them to find their self-worth with the likes they get on instagram, that is judging their self-worth based on what other people think of them. i want them to get their self-worth from being ethical people. i want them to know their neighbor which is the other

reason, i have found particularly among my political friends on both sides of the aisle that we create for ourselves our own communities online and everyone in our community looks exactly like us, we share the same thoughts, nothing is a surprise to us. we don't know the person in the apartment next door are the house down the street, we don't pay attention to the homeless man on the bridge, someone else in the community, we don't have this because it is all online and when do you get sick and think you're going to die and you realize it is not our facebook friends bringing us meals but our church friends with a person across the street who heard about the situation as we need to know our next-door neighbor, we need to know about the person down the street who has problems and needs help, prayer, we need to bring into our home and have around our kitchen table people from our church to see other people share our values but need to bring in the people we

don't know but want to know who may not share our values but show our kids we should be able to find common ground as people with people who disagree on politics. lessons i learned for three years, i grew up watching in dubai, the american news network, people like james carville, they were the bad guys. they were on the other side of the aisle. i adore them. and we were rooting for the saints and we still root for them. to find common ground. what can we -- henry kissinger said, they are so menial, seems

like so many political fights are so nasty because they are so meaningless, neither side changes much of anything these days but we have the power within ourselves to change our communities by getting to know the people by helping the person next door when they can't help themselves, hoping maybe but not expecting they can help us one day when we need help, showing grace to people who don't show us grace, and friends with people who don't want to be our friends. that is what i want for my kids. if nothing else i want them to be a better person that i was and that is the aspiration of everyone for their children to be better than they are. those are the reasons i wrote this. the last chapter as i was writing the first eight chapters i make lists of all the recipes i need to include but all the things i want them to know that i wasn't sure i could work in somewhere else and the last chapter became my version of proverbs come all the pieces of advice my dad gave me growing up like don't

worry about the laundry tax, no one can read them. my personal favorite device was to -- after a fight. a day's drive from my house, two hours, and my wife is taller than me with a shotgun. those are the reasons why so i will read you a little bit of this. i want to write a chapter what i was going through at the moment i wrote the chapter and the title of it needs to be the theology of suffering. that is what i was dwelling on and no one is going to read a chapter entitled the theology of the it is come up with a better name. the title of this chapter, summer in the south, it is going on as i am writing the

chapter in real time. here is what is happening as i write this, 7 days ago, in surgery having his tonsils removed, my 8-year-old, 5 days ago my wife had surgery to reattach her retina. for the last week i have gotten up at midnight, 4:00 in the morning at 6:00 in the morning to give pain medicine. for the first few days kristi had to have pain medicine too. my in-laws stayed with us for the week. stayed up through the night, did the laundry and helps with homework while taking care of gunner. i still had my radio show to do in the evening. i stayed up till midnight to give gunnar his first dose of medicine doing as much work as i could including writing this. every time i wake gunnar up, he screams and fights for close to 20 minutes. he will spit out the medicine multiple times and we go through multiple shirts and he

will wear down and submit. not sure there is a better analogy to god than to know that i'm dad to paraphrase the scripture. what my kids do not see is maced dagan up wiping tears out of my eyes. it hurts to me my wife and kids and pain. gunner's screams are so terrible he cannot talk, holds his throat with his hands and tries to cover his ears with his elbows. i knew the doctor said his ears would hurt, had no idea how badly it would hurt. people are trying to sterilize themselves from pain like this. they want to shield themselves. i want to shield my wife from pain. pain is part of the process. how do we appreciate joy if we had not known misery or pain. if nothing else there's a

theology to pain and suffering. i have a preacher friend who tells the story about pain from an old church was three women had cancer. the first took an oral chemotherapy like my wife, had no nausea. the second woman took traditional chemotherapy, lost weight and her hair fell out. the third woman had done all of it and nothing worked, all she had was prepared to die. the first woman looked at the second and despite her pain was glad she kept her hair and figure. the second looked at the first about losing her hair was a better trade than being in pain and aching all the time. they looked at the third woman and realized that they were going through a rough patch at least their treatment was working. the third woman looked at the first and was glad to have been release of her struggle. when it was over, prepared to meet her make her. all three looked at another woman but lost her son in a bombing. they thought they had terrible struggles. they did not have to deal with the loss of losing a son.

the fourth woman confided that she was solely herself and her son would never go through the struggles the other women went through or see his old mother struggle, it gave her piece. i cannot tell you how often i dwelled on this. i see my own life and family's life a change in our perspective with others suffering. there's a couple not far from us to have a son. his older brother has the same illness and died. the nicest godly is to people. edlund prays for them regularly and the moon is affected whether this family had good day or bad. she often wonders why god would do that to a family. we can look at our own struggles and think our children despite the pain and discomfort are with us. we can see how much more empathetic and sympathetic we are, not a post but a reality. we know from our own struggles a home-cooked meal is in need, the best thing to do. even though it is different we relate to other people

suffering. i remember a preacher coming to sunday school after suffering and death. he tells of a lady in his church who was in a car wreck. people flooded her hospital room to comfort her as she was broken, bruised and crying and no one could console her. her best friend walked in, climbed into the hospital, held the lady and cried, and many of us have not, to shield our souls for suffering and pain, losing an ability to related care for other people. living requires suffering, steady flow of conformity takes away appreciation for the good times, takes away the good times. 16 years of marriage, 17 as of today, we had a few that we were not dealing with her health or mind. this was punctuated by one hospital and another, kristi's near-death experience, we had

gunner and an easy time. we are back on hard times, prepared us for these hard times. i will leave you with the advice, in a chapter being from louisiana, and it is pronounced lagniappe, it means something extra. i won a tv show, to focus on how to get through a century hostile to the values. sit down and break bread with them. i would call the show -- no one would watch it because they couldn't pronounce the name but it would be an awesome show. gumbo made almost every day. in my chapter all the other things i want my kids to know i

couldn't work into a chapter. change your pillow every year and mattress every decade. don't keep with people who can never admit they were wrong. they please and thank you but never expect others to reciprocate. learn to break bread, the smell of yeast makes a house feel like home. get married and stay married, happiness is not the goal of marriage, it is the byproduct of marriage, the goal of marriage is to be one in body and mind. and we need to do better ourselves. by a paper road atlas and learn to read it. your kitchen is not your living room. batman is the best superhero because he is not super, he is smart, superman is boring. your grandfather likes to sandy gourmet's orbital weasel never gets sucked into a jet engine, left but never be the weasel.

learn to use a gun, learn to flip it on, learn how to cook, then have friends over and do all the cooking, you will be amazed how few people do it these days. directed at my son, remember to put the seat down. learn to foreign language and travel to that country can always have one friend who can tell you, with yes men will destroy you. at the end of the day, pet your dog, the longest kiss to your spouse, your spouse is supposed to be with you forever and kids will move out you hope. pumpkins are gourds, not spices, people who like pumpkin spice are weird and should not be trusted. print your best photographs, the life lesson i learned, print your best photographs, delete your worst, the digital age allows us to accumulate so many memories on computers but we forget to print them out. photographic memories are art, they capture my visit was for a fleeting moment so print out the pictures, share them, save

them, don't let them collect digital dust forgot not old computer whose hard drive will go bad. eat sweet potatoes. they are important. understand there are beautiful things you may not like, even if you do not like, beethoven's music is beautiful even if it is not your favorite. fathers do not know everything but when our children are old they look like we know everything and are amazed by every other, during this time we shape our children for later in life. if we live able lie. if we are honest they will be honest. wherever you are leave a place in better condition, public restroom is the major exception. your home, school, community and planet should be improved. leaving places better than you found them, there are those who think you are doing hartl wrong. life is not fair, nor was it ever meant to be. breaking the law is a sin but driving right at the speed limit is annoying, god will forgive you for speeding even if the police officer doesn't.

apologize have an accountability group who can be honest with you and you with them who can push you to be better than you are and they go on from there. my last paragraph of the book to my children, i will try to read this without crying. these thoughts, words, recipes, to cherish. christy and i will die one day. we all will die. we do not know the future but i know these things are true and want my children to know they are true. i worry more than i should about my kids, my mind races to order stories, if it gets lost or snakebites, devlin going swimming, what if she falls in and around. i hope it is natural to be overprotective and over worried and overthink the dangers that lie ahead for our kids. i just want them to love god, love us and be kind, most of all your mother and i love you so much. we go into your room and watch you sleep. iq part of the fabric from your

favorite stuffed animal in your travel bag, and rub it in my hands to remind me of you. i can listen to it and here you. i love you, your mother does too. when the day comes you can no longer see a face-to-face, we will be behind the veil of eternity watching and waiting to hold you once again. thank you. [applause] i'm happy to take any questions you have. they told me you have to go to this microphone if you have any questions would otherwise i have to talk another 20 minutes because we are live on c-span. i am capable of talking. what i write in the book that i fell into everything i have ever done, one of the jobs i hated, i would have been great

at being a lawyer but there are these things called client and they are often terrible and have problems with easy solutions and refused to go with the easy solution because they would rather sue the person who made the mad but after that when i was at red state someone from msnbc called and asked if i could be on msnbc and i did and years later av who wanted me was at cnn, and asked if i wanted a job at cnn and after that the local radio program director called me and asked if i could fill in for a man on the radio the next day and i said sure, i have been on the radio before and they remembered me. when i got to the station the next morning it turns out the individual was arrested in a crack house. the day turned into a week and the weeks turned into three

months, expired gift certificate in the steakhouse. when i was there, the radio people in atlanta, one of them read my website, and asked if i wanted a weekend show. i said no. i was doing cnn, never saw my family to begin with and asked if i could fill in for herman cain and i filled in for herman cain and at the end of the show a group of people in suits came into the room and i thought that was the second they were going to say i was never allowed in the building again and instead they said herman cain is going to run for president. we don't want you to have a weekend show. can you take his spot on the radio. i never had a job in radio before and they did not know that when they asked the question. they assumed i had been on radio more than the week i had been when they heard me. from 9 to midnight for three

weeks until herman left and then 7:00 to 10:00 and 6:00 to 9:00, 5 to 7, the largest in the southeast, the most listened to radio show on any station regardless of format and spend two hours a day talking about whatever i want to talk about, having a wife and two kids at home. i stopped to check traffic, i have a captured audience, to figure out how to get home, not me, the traffic guy but i can talk about what i want to talk about and i found more than nobody wants to talk about. people are tired of the news of the day. we are not 9 months into this presidency and people are

exhausted and doesn't matter what political party you are and people yelling at each other and the most inconsequential things on the planet are the most consequential things on the planet and getting online finding people who agree with them to get together and have cathartic experiences and community is collapsing around them. people losing their minds turning into the tv station where everybody agrees with us and coming out as a conservative in 2016, being a guest host for rush limbaugh saying i wasn't going to support the president and his election everyone was pretty sure it destroyed my career and it never dawned on me that i could lose my job and health insurance and kill my wife. her medicine is $20,000 a month. i looked and the alternative -- the affordable care act, it wouldn't be affordable for that medicine. if i lost my job we would been in a world of hurt.

my ratings went up instead and part of it was i spent less time talking about the daily news because i didn't want to talk about it, didn't support to my listener supported who called my station demanding i be fired and spent more time talking about other news and when i would talk about the presidential race, spend time critically of my own side, particularly people of faith who put their faith in a politician instead of a savior in heaven and my disappointment with that and the ratings kept going up. a diverse audience over time. everybody thought i was destroying my career the show grew and i got a book out of it. >> i for a long time to ask people this question and one

word of prep. you know the definition i am sure of profane. i personally think the price we have to pay for medicine, that was prompted by your $20,000 a month, is absolutely profane and knowing there is a just god in heaven somebody has got to answer for that i think. what do you think? >> i will be a lot of people answering for a lot of things on the last day. the importance is believing there's going to be that last day. somebody asked a while back if i really believe that? yes i do. not only do i believe it, it gives me comfort we may see no justice in this lifetime but we will see what it really is in the next lifetime. my wife -- is a miracle of

modern medicine that genetic medicine could be developed for a particular form of cancer very few people have. i understand the cost of her medicine because few people have it. and jacked up the price, things like that, you wonder what is going on. all i can say to my kids in the book is don't believe the myth that people are really good at humanity is really good, we are a bunch of sinners. i tell people i'm a conservative because i'm a christian and i know everybody is a sinner and i want as few of them in charge of me as possible. the government and people in charge, i don't want my kids to have that to be so jaded nothing can matter.

i was on city council for a term. when i took my radio job i had to resign 6 months early because i couldn't have a part-time elected official job and full-time radio job and it was the most miserable four years of my life, somebody's trash does not get collected you will get yelled at in the grocery store even if it wasn't your fault. the reason i ran for office was it dawned on me when i had to do, and 10 asian theme massage parlors were closed but every one of them was open and flies out the door and couldn't figure out what was going on. it a reference for human trafficking. i ran for office and was shocked, encouraged the police to do investigations and more than one of these places was shuttered for fronts for human trafficking. they find local landlords were politically connected and rent from them knowing they can

provide them to stop the investigations, the only thing i read on and refuse to leave the radio show until we can pass ordinance and the thing we kept running into with people say why are you directing police from bad crimes to this? this is consenting adults? pay no attention to the human trafficking, doesn't really happen, they can't get proof. a conservative came up the greatest way to show these places down, the regulatory state. we went to the legitimate massage parlors and they all had lightbulbs and clean running water and people weren't allow to live in or over the shop so we passed a law that said if you have a massage parlor you have to have a log of your customers, lightbulbs in every room the work and not allowed to live there. and amazingly none of these places were open anymore because they didn't want to comply with basic regulations which you don't need to send police, just a business license inspectors, they love to shut people down and it worked.

>> i don't want my child to experience the cynicism that is pervasive today that i experienced about politics but what would you suggest we do to move ourselves and posterity away from the cynicism that is pervasive in our political culture? >> it is not a political deck and it will sound like that. stop looking to a group of people in washington dc to provide your solutions. look to your local government and local community and local nonprofits and local churches and find solutions locally. it is a philosophical thing and some of you disagree but when we concentrate all our

decisionmaking in one location, in addition to allowing us to become cynical when it doesn't go our way it makes every fight a hill to dine on because every fight is about that and the founders wisely said federalism is the solution, you should be able to live your life the way you live your life and people of like mind and move to another state if you find disagreement in that state instead of 1-size-fits-all everywhere big government and what i found, whether you are conservative or liberal you think washington matters most and it was never designed to be that way. by focusing on the problems and allowing it to become as powerful as it has we give up on our local community. the number of counties in this country that now have -- in my position a single person running for open seats on school boards or city council

or county commissions is growing because people are not looking to their local county for their solution so why run for office? it is the one guy that covets power who runs as opposed to the local person who has a kid at a local public school who is a problem and wants the problem fixed, the local school board will fix that for you. re-engaging local communities around the dinner table, on the sidewalk, in city council, is so important as part of civic commitment. and looking at far off places, i really want -- i write about this. they are masters of their own destiny. no one will solve problems for them. i learned that with my wife's health situation and my health

situation. it is us having to do that and people not coming to us. we have to engage, the lack of engagement breeds cynicism and engagements where we don't matter. we don't matter to washington because they know how to micro targeted if they get so many votes from certain people they can get elected. the individual doesn't matter. at the local level the individual matters and what you do whether you are from nashville or any other city in your local community matters. he will affect more people on a daily basis by going to local soup kitchen and helping them feed others then you will by picking up the phone and yelling at a college student in washington who works for your congressman and if we could get back to that taking care of each other locally instead of saying someone else will do it,

i will stop, in seminary we spent three weeks in the sermon on the mount and what is jesus talking about? talking about the concept of the old testament that god takes care of his people and people are supposed to take care of each other and the rich person who has a lot is supposed to take care of the poor person, you can't compel them to go there supposed to because they are the president of the porcelain -- suddenly rich and the rich for us and find himself or the roles reversed and people take care of each other in their local community. cs lewis, convinced god did not intend us to care about disasters or the disaster in our backyard, his point was the rise of global news we care about something terrible that happened on the far side of the world the 100 years ago we were heard about a month from now. it gets us amped up. usa today story the other day,

the supervolcano in yellowstone may explode earlier than expected and wipe out all life on earth. if you read it we are still 400,000 years away from when that is supposed to be but you had to read to the bottom of the story to find it out. we and ourselves up on these things and care about things and worry about things. if nothing else this past year taught me my favorite verse of the bible is why worry about tomorrow, it will take care of itself. focus on today. we need to do more of that, caring for people in our community and families and friends and not worrying about things that happened far off the we have no control and no power over and no one else does either. not to say we are not supposed to know about him or maybe we can find answers or supposed to send people to help the poor in other countries but it is to

say there is a great failure in the christian church in america today where we send our kids to mexico to hammer nails and work on cans when we have homeless people down the street we ignore because we don't consider that a mission deal. it is a damning indictment on the american church that we have a lot of kids from inner cities with no fathers at home in crumbling public schools when you have great church facilities that are abandoned for 5 days, and give these kids a smaller education where the church is and open the facilities to these people but we lost our priorities, the american church lost its priorities. so many church leaders decided to get political and cast their lot saying cyrus the great was returning us to jerusalem and letting us rebuild the temple, the temple has artie been built and rose again 3 days later and ascended into heaven, don't know why we are looking for that. it pains me to see so many

people looking for political solutions for spiritual problems so thank you very much on that note. i hope you will buy a copy of the book and read it and pass it on to your family. if nothing else i have my family gumbo recipe in there. the most controversial part of my book because it doesn't have worcestershire in it which i point out to southerners is a british product which they don't care to have pointed out. amazing how food can make people angry but around the dinner table, there are 33 recipes to accomplish that.

thank you for having me today, thank you. [applause] >> thank you for being here and thank you for joining us. and have it signed. we will meet you at the war memorial plasma. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> this is booktv on c-span2 coverage of the southern festival of books at central library in downtown nashville. we are halfway through the first day of live coverage. in a few minutes we will be back with our discussion on westward expansion. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> here is a look at upcoming book fairs happening around the country. live from the southern festival of books with oscar talks from the city central library. the ninth annual boston book festival in louisiana book festival in baton rouge will happen the same day, october 28th. in early november live from two state capitals was at the texas book festival in austin and wisconsin book festival in madison. last month, live from miami-dade college in the book fair, featured authors include senator our franken, walter isaacson, nbc news and many

more. and book fairs to watch previous festival coverage, booktv.org. >> let me talk about a couple examples. i mentioned materials, what is used in laboratories, cells that grow in plastic dishes and grow successfully in the first of these was featured, the story of henrietta lacks a wonderful book and also a tv movie that is just out and a woman diagnosed with cervical cancer at johns hopkins in 1951, isolated cervical cancer and turned it into the world's first set, tremendously useful line to be used in biomedical research around the world but

this turned out to be cell lines, incredibly rapidly and if you make a small error, they are throughout all your cells and in the liver cell, ultimately realize these cells, huge problem for decades scientists recognized in the -- that these were taking over and a lot of concern about it and hand drinking and not much was done. starting 13 years ago, there were good tests that could rapidly identify whether these cells were hela cells or what scientists thought they were using but those tests did not take off or used as widely as

they need to be. 450 other examples of cell lines that are misidentified in biomedical research lab and they have these tools to check them out but they'll cost money, so these things don't get used. these tests are not used as much as they ought to be so that is one source, bad cell lines and a second i mentioned is the methods that are picked up. scientists design experiments that don't have enough power, classic examples involve studies of lou gehrig's disease, they have led to a lot of drugs and all have been failures, the search for treatment for als. one of the problems, they don't think thoroughly about what they needed to do, how many mice they needed to use, to do

an experiment you might take dozens of mice for your study group and dozens more for your control group, that could easily cost $100 and many academic scientists don't have that kind of money. i will do 10 mice and call my result a pilot study and they are constrained by resources but on the other hand there have been many occasions these things have been led to large-scale clinical trials and lead to results that have been very disappointing that look promising when you do it in a small number of mice and maybe spend tens of millions of dollars trying to expand and discover it doesn't work. one example of a methodological problem that gives a flavor for what can go wrong.

i mentioned bad assumptions. and the assumption about mouse work is if you study something in my sent it works in mice you can cure cancer in mice and strokes but those findings don't translate to human beings, we are not just giant mice and mice are not tiny people. the assumption is they are mammals, we are mammals, they out to work and often times i don't have anything better. all i can do is use rodents and hope for the best and hope we should be more modest in our expectations what can come out of the studies and thinking about ways to make better use of animals, think more broadly how to extract meaning without assuming and crossing your fingers what works in mice will work for human beings so that is one thing as well. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> is a look at books being published this week.

endurance details scott kelly and his record-setting year aboard the international space station. former fox news acre gretchen carlson shares the story of women impacted by sexual harassment in the workplace. political commentator keith olbermann offers his concerns about donald trump and in the second world war, military historian victor davis hanson recounts key battles of world war ii. also published this week chasing light is a behind-the-scenes look at michelle obama through the lens of former white house photographer amanda lucid on. and the quantum labyrinth, the relationship between physicists richard feynman and john wheeler and how they received quantum physics was award-winning author and playwright dan melson recounts how a member of the french resistance gave her life to save hundreds of jewish children from being sent to auschwitz in suzanne's children. new technologies and how they influence the world by

scientist kelly weiner smith and cartoonist zach weiner smith. look for these titles in bookstores this coming weekend watch for many of these authors in the future on booktv on c-span2. >> as we know the difficult part in iraq and afghanistan was not taking the regime down but figuring out what happened afterwards. in the aftermath of iraq, chaos and a rise in insurgency fueled by saddam hussein's baath party. certain operations i brought in to do man hunting and find.m and his son. they track down both of them. he is captured by special operators and it was hoped initially the decapitation strike would put a lid on the insurgency, that would fall by

now that saddam was gone but there were others who were ready and willing to take up the charge. we then find ourselves in a prolonged insurgency campaign. around this time we have general stanley mcchrystal coming in, task for 714 is the task force he sets up in iraq. at the time it was not particularly active and a lot of people thought elite forces should not be doing daily operations but should focus only on big targets. general stanley mcchrystal decides we can do that and he said that would not work. he looks for ways to ramp up operations and does so very effectively, there were 10 operations per month when he comes in 2004 and goes up to 302,000 -- in 2006.

this makes possible by advances in communication technology and the fact the iraqis are using cell phones and computers without a lot of thought to the fact they are getting intercepted. quite impressive and a lot of people think at this scale we can destroy the insurgency. we also have on the other side, a term people get confused about. the operators who are not part of j sock, mainly special forces, navy seals at this time but they also decide they want to do this surgical strike precision raid, go out and hold down bad guys in the middle of the night and as we move away from their more traditional role of working with local forces, local populations and come under fire for taking them